Cooking up the sort of media storm that can only be brewed with the aid of black magic, adolescent eyeballs and a handful of earlobes from the globe's finest music journalists, Brighton's Esben and the Witch draw on an almost mystical broth of minimal analog wizardry, enthralling siren-like androgynous muffles and mumbles and a healthy obsession for the mythical. Upon listening to the likes of the hallucinatory Lucia, At the Precipice and wailing Marching Song it's painstakingly clear that Esben doesn't require a Hogwarts degree to qualify such magnificent musical witchcraft. Two downsides: 1) Their homemade EP limited to a run of 500 and unleashed enthusiastically by Rough Trade has long-since evaporated and 2) fairytale front woman Rachel Davies sounds ever so slightly like Florence at times. Touring alongside the likes of The Big Pink and The xx, there's no disguising their immediate East London appeal, with festival slots lined up for both Shoreditch's Stag & Dagger and Bethnal Green's Field Day later on in the year. Nightmare pop, Skeleton Swoon, however you want to pigeonhole this trio they'll slip through conformist fingertips.Esben and the Witch
Lucia, at the Precipice by Esben and the Witch
